


The Truck

by RainbowArches



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, I Believe in Jasper Sitwell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-18 03:32:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8147729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainbowArches/pseuds/RainbowArches
Summary: Shortly after getting hit by a semi Jasper wakes up in Akela's apartment.





	

“ _hhhH_ _HH- **guh** \--  fff… uck _”

Jasper clasped his ribs and tried to find a position to lie in that didn’t hurt so much. Breathing was a chore. Waking up had been a terrible idea.

He shifted carefully on the couch and looked around as much as he could without moving his neck more than an inch. He didn’t recognize this apartment. It was brighter and plainer than his, and higher up judging from the distance of the honks and sirens and other traffic sounds from the street.

“Are you okay?”

He recognized that voice.

“Akela?”

He was proven right when she stepped into view.

“Oh thank God,” she said. “Hill was starting to panic. She’s never done that before. Made me nervous. Are you okay?”

Obviously he wasn’t okay. He’d put that down to nervousness. He had questions of his own but he didn’t know which ones were safe to ask.

“How long was I out?” He’d start there and work his way up.

“About an hour and a half, two.”

“How did you find me? I should be stuck to a dozen different tires right now.”

“Yeah.” Here Akela looked a little sheepish. “That was my semi that hit you. Sorry.”

Jasper frowned at the ceiling, and then at her.

“Your semi? You’re a trucker? Even with the…” He gestured vaguely at his eye, referring to her eye patch.

“I tested extremely well,” she said. “If Fury can still fly, I can still drive.”

“Yeah, but, a semi?”

“I’ve done it before. I was the best, actually.”

“You ran me over!”

“Well what are you doing flying into traffic?! How is that smart?!”

“I didn’t--!” He cut himself off because getting worked up wasn’t doing his ribs any favors. “I was thrown into traffic.”

“I know.” Akela pulled the coffee table closer an inch and sat down. “ _Let me see your invite please._ ”

“ _I left it in my other jacket._ ”

It was one of Fury’s codes. Jasper was relieved to hear it from her. It would make the foreseeable future much easier.

“Lucky it was me who hit you,” Akela said. “Otherwise you would have ended up in a hospital, which might not be the safest place for you right now. Hill’s sending a doctor.”

At the moment it was easier to talk to the ceiling than Akela’s face, but that was annoying so he tried to sit up. It wasn’t easy, even with Akela helping him, but he managed eventually.

“I haven’t seen you since the trial,” he said. “What’s Fury had you doing?”

“Relocating some of his super-secret stuff, getting some safe houses ready, that kind of thing.”

“Huh. That’s not your usual niche, is it?”

“Is deep cover yours?”

No it wasn’t. He’d been fighting off a panic attack every few hours since he started. Turning out to be really good at deep cover didn’t help.

“I think I’m pretty much done that now.”

“I’d say you’re pretty much dead now. At least you’ll be able to recover in peace.”

Jasper took a proper look around the apartment this time. It was clean and comfortably furnished but there was nothing to suggest that Akela loved this place or cared about it or was attached to it in any way. Way back before her disastrous mission she had posters of indie horror films and milk crates of C.D.s and her books and board games decoratively organized on the bookshelf. She’d loved that place. He had a hard time believing she lived in this place.

“Has your recovery been peaceful?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Guess so. It’s nice to have something to do.”

“I guess you’re away from home a lot.”

“There is that.”

Jasper wished he’d got in touch with her earlier but it had been too risky. HYDRA had been watching his every move and he didn’t want to draw them to her unnecessarily.

Besides the pain in his ribs he felt a lot better for seeing her and knowing he wasn’t alone in the plan to save SHIELD. There’d been a few people he trusted but who couldn’t trust him the way they thought they could because he couldn’t tell them what he was really up to. He knew Fury must have shared his suspicions with other people but couldn’t tell them about each other because he didn’t know who was a threat or what they were planning. Now Jasper could finally talk. He didn’t want to this precise moment. There was too much to talk about and he was in too much pain. But he could relax a little.

Akela moved to sit next to him on the couch.

“I wondered why you didn’t come see me,” she said. “I get it now. Hill told me… not a lot, but enough. I missed you.”

Jasper didn’t laugh because he was genuinely touched. Also it would hurt too much. From Akela _I missed you_ was a declaration of undying love.

“You could have come seen me,” he said. It was better that she hadn’t but he had missed her.

“I was busy. And it was hard to go back, you know, reconnect, after. I haven’t seen anyone except Fury and Hill.”

Jasper suspected she wasn’t _too_ bothered by this. She always was happiest in her own company. He’d thought after being locked away for seven years she’d be more inclined to seek people out, but maybe what she really needed was to do good work for a good person and succeed. Jasper wondered what he was going to need in the coming months. He _was_ doing good work for a good person, a good cause, but he couldn’t say he’d succeeded. He’d been complicit in a lot of bad things for the sake of this good cause and now it was all crumbling around him. It was too early to tell if HYDRA would win in the long run, but SHIELD was definitely losing right now, and he didn’t know how much help he’d be anymore. Now that Fury was--- _wait a minute._

“Have you been taking orders from Hill?”

“Well they come from Fury but—“

“You were running an errand for him a couple hours ago. How long were you on that trip?”

“I don’t know. About, uh—“

“Is Fury dead or not?”

Akela’s eye went wide. “What do you mean is he dead or not?”

Jasper fished his phone out of his pocket but it was in pieces.

“Can I borrow your phone?” he asked.

Akela handed it to him.

He rattled off a text to Hill. A brief argument followed. Then he handed the phone back and sunk back into the couch with a sigh.

“He’s alive. Never mind. We’re good. Guess you don’t listen to the radio on the road.”

“Not much, no. He died?”

“Legally yes. But stand by for orders.”

Akela rolled her eye. “There’s going to be a lot of that in the future, isn’t there?”

“Orders?

“No. Presumed dead until further notice.”

“I imagine so, yes.”

He could only imagine the chaos at headquarters right now. He wasn’t sorry to miss it. That would be too complicated a situation. But he hoped he’d be able to help the people caught in the wreckage. He hated feeling like he was abandoning them but there simply wasn’t anything he could do at the moment. Maybe getting thrown into a semi would prove to be a good thing. He wasn’t going to thank anyone for it, but in a little while he’d be able to help people without the subterfuge. He’d failed to preserve the organization and that failure had cost a lot of lives. But he’d try to make up for it. It would be a hell of a lot easier this time; at least he hoped it would. He could get more done as a dead man.

He wasn’t going to be cheerful about the dead part for long, he knew. But it wasn’t easy to be optimistic in the light of everything that was happening outside this apartment so he wanted to maintain it for as long as he could.

There was a knock at the door.

“There’s the doctor,” Akela said, patting his knee as she stood up. “You’ll be better in no time.”

 


End file.
